Groups planning to bus pro-Palestinian protesters from Wisconsin to Chicago for DNC demonstrations

By Tiffany Li
For WisPolitics

Pro-Palestinian Wisconsinites preparing to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago say they see little difference between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris on Gaza.

As the Democratic National Convention is gearing up to start on Monday, mass protests regarding the U.S.’s involvement in the Israel-Hamas war are expected on the streets of Chicago. Pro-Palestinian groups and ceasefire advocates in Wisconsin are organizing to get Wisconsinites to Chicago, and rallies were set to take place in Madison and Milwaukee Saturday ahead of the DNC.

Ryan Hamann, a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, is organizing a 56-person bus from Appleton through Milwaukee to Chicago bringing protesters to the March on the DNC for free. Hamann said he saw Palestine as the “definitive issue” in the presidential election and thinks both Trump and Harris “support the genocide.” 

“On the broad, ranging issues that affect the most amount of people, both within the United States and outside of it, there’s a lot more of a community of interest between the two of them than there is difference,” Hamann said. “We are struggling for liberated Palestine, and neither of the candidates represent that position.”

Hamann said he thought the dissatisfaction with the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war would manifest in lower turnout and not necessarily more Republican votes.

“I think we’re going to see a lot more people that just don’t participate because they don’t feel like their views are reflected by the choices,” Hamann said.

Another bus from Milwaukee to Chicago, with a 30-person capacity, is being organized by Peace Action Wisconsin. PAW member Pamela Richard said others were planning on taking the train to Chicago to join the protests.

Dahlia Saba, a PhD candidate at the UW-Madison, is a member of the Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America. The group is co-organizing tomorrow’s “Not Another Bomb” rallies in Madison and Milwaukee, which call for an embargo on U.S. arms to Israel. 

Saba said she is planning to head to Chicago to join the DNC protests. She said that, despite not wanting Trump to become president again, she and many others felt they could not see the Democratic Party and Harris as the “lesser evil” compared to Trump because of the “horrific” situation in Gaza. 

“Our red line for what we cannot vote for is genocide,” Saba said. “When talking about ‘Trump would be worse’ — I don’t know what’s worse than [the current situation], and that’s why you see a lot of people who are no longer able to vote between the lesser of two evils… if the Harris campaign wants to win over voters who are upset about what’s going on, they need to do much more than draw a comparison between themselves and Trump.”

While Harris has stated that she believes Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas, she has said that “how it does so matters,” and that “the conditions are inhumane and our community humanity compels us to act” regarding the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.

Both Hamann and Saba said Harris’ replacement of Biden in the race did not affect how they and many of their coalition members felt about voting for the Dem candidate.

“The truth is that Kamala Harris was Joe Biden’s vice president. It’s one in the same administration,” Hamann said.

“If Kamala Harris wants to win over these voters, she needs to actively differentiate herself from the Biden administration,” Saba added.

Regarding whether the DNC protests were likely to affect Democratic political leaders’ actions regarding the Israel-Hamas war, Hamann said he was not optimistic, despite the expected scale of the protest.

“I would like to think that if there are 50,000, 60,000, 100,000 people in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention… that [lawmakers] would acknowledge that the popular sentiment is support for Palestine,” Hamann said. “But the realist in me does not think that those inside the convention with the power to stop it will change their views. Because at the end of the day, people like Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, whomever it is that becomes president, Democrat or Republican, these people are beholden to the corporations and to the lobbyists… We have to force them to change.”